Browsing by Subject "Supervision"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Anxiety's effect on the experience of supervision of genetic counseling students
    (2013-08) MacFarlane, Ian Michael
    Genetic counseling has been a recognized profession in North America for over 40 years. Supervised clinical experiences with patients comprise a critical component of genetic counseling student education. Previous research has found genetic counseling students s tend to be more anxiety prone than the general population (Jungbluth et al., 2011), and anxiety related to supervision has been found in genetic counseling (e.g., Hendrickson et al., 2002) and related fields (e.g., Skovholt & Ronnestad, 2003). The present study investigated how anxiety affects the experience of supervision for genetic counseling students. Second year genetic counseling students (~N = 200) were invited to participate through email invitations distributed via training directors of the 33 programs accredited by the American Board of Genetic Counseling. The initial online survey contained the trait scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger et al., 1983) to estimate anxiety proneness in this population and an invitation to participate in a 1-hour interview focusing on students' experiences in supervision. The interviews questions investigated seven research questions focusing on satisfaction with training, interactions with patients and supervisors, perceptions of the structure and processes of supervision, and experiences related to anxiety. High, moderate, and low trait anxiety groups were created using STAI scores, and the high and low groups' interview responses were compared using consensual qualitative research methodology (CQR; Hill, 2012). Analysis discovered relatively few differences between groups. The high anxiety group was more likely to describe problematic supervisory relationships, appreciate the supervisor's ability to help them when they get stuck in sessions, and feel their anxiety had a negative effect on their performance in general and in supervision. Common themes included supervisors' balancing support and guidance, the importance of feedback, ego-centric responses, and supervisors as focal points. Students unanimously reported positive levels of satisfaction with their clinical rotations in general and supervision specifically. The results of the present study are largely consistent with the literature, including recently published supervision competencies (Eubanks Higgins et al., 2013). Further research findings and research, practice, and training recommendations are provided.
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    Effectiveness of principals as evaluators of teachers
    (2009-10) Gregoire, Shirley Ann
    The purpose of this study was to gather perceptions of principals and teachers with regard to the effectiveness of principals as evaluators of teachers. Perceptions were reviewed within the context of seven standards across the four attributes of the personnel standards developed by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation (Joint Committee, 2009). These standards, organized by attributes, define quality personnel evaluation in education. The research was exploratory and utilized quantitative research methods. Principal and teacher participants were asked to identify their perceptions of the frequency with which principals followed effective evaluation practices. Teacher participants were also asked to identify the relative importance of the practices as a factor of effective evaluation. Because validity and reliability are of heightened importance when evaluation results are applied to performance pay decisions (Loup & Ellett, 1997), the study used perceptions of middle school principals and tenured teachers who participated in the Minnesota Q-Comp program (Q-Comp), a performance based merit pay system. An analysis of the findings indicated that principals are effective evaluators of teachers. Teachers rated principals as "Often" following the effective practices on 16 of the 24 practices. Principals' self ratings generally mirrored those of the teachers with principals frequently rating themselves higher. A further analysis based on the relative importance of each practice as ranked by teachers further supports principal effectiveness as evaluators. Principals' practices which are ranked higher in frequency are the practices that teachers identified as most important. Principals' practices that are ranked lower in frequency are of lower importance to the teachers. This study found that principals are effective evaluators of tenured teachers as determined by the frequency with which they follow national personnel evaluation standards. The study suggests implications for principal preparation programs and district in-service training based on the effective practice skills analysis. The study further suggests that principals are capable of assuming a significant role in tenured teacher evaluation in a performance pay system.
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    Empathy training in genetic counseling: an investigation of how genetic counselors learn to "walk in their patients' shoes".
    (2012-08) VandenLangenberg, Erin
    Empathy is a fundamental component of genetic counseling, but empirical data regarding the nature of genetic counselor empathy and empathy training methods are lacking. In this descriptive study, 60 genetic counselors, recruited through an online survey sent via the NSGC listserv, provided written definitions of empathy and responded to demographic questions. Additionally, genetic counselor program training directors nominated genetic counseling supervisors they perceived as focusing on empathy development when training students. Seventeen supervisors subsequently completed a similar online survey. Eleven genetic counselors and 16 supervisors completed follow a semi-structured, audio recorded phone interview to further investigate how genetic counselors define their professional use of empathy, to clarify training methods used to build empathy skills, and (for supervisors only) to determine methods supervisors use to evaluate empathy development. Inductive analysis of written definitions from the survey yielded themes consistent with Barrett-Lennard's (1981) 3-component model of empathy, namely, that genetic counselor's perceive empathy as: (1) the ability to understand another person's experience; (2) communicating that understanding; and (3) the other person's perception of being understood. Modified Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR; Hill, Thompson, & Williams, 1997; Hill, Knox, Thompson, Williams, & Hess, 2005) methods were used to analyze interview transcripts of genetic counselors and supervisors. Findings from this analysis showed that, similar to other health professions, genetic counselors and supervisors are more cognizant of Barrett-Lennard's (1981) Components 1 and 2. Genetic counselors reported learning their definition of empathy in their training program but honing their empathy skills primarily through clinical experience. Supervisors reported training and experience were equally important in their both their own and their student supervisees' learning of empathy and skill development. Supervisors experienced increased comfort using empathy in clinical practice as they became more familiar with the concept and reported emphasizing empathy more with their students as they gained clinical and supervisory experience. Genetic counselors reported that with experience empathy became a tangible skill and a process used throughout the session. Both groups of interviewees described empathy as an evolving process. While some participants believed empathy might be innate, most reported empathy is something one is continuously learning and it is refined through training and experience. Post-genetic counseling session reflection and anticipatory guidance were most frequently mentioned by both groups as supervisory methods used to promote empathy development. Findings from this study were congruent with the Reciprocal Engagement Model (REM) of Genetic Counseling (McCarthy Veach, Bartels, & LeRoy, 2007), a published model of the genetic counseling process. A model of empathy in genetic counseling, the Reciprocal Engagement Model of Empathy (REM-E), is proposed to describe how empathy can be infused into genetic counseling practice. Additional findings, practice implications and research recommendations are presented.
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    Essays in Macroeconomics and Firm Dynamics
    (2023-07) Ansari, Mahdi
    This dissertation consists of three chapters in macroeconomics and firm dynamics. They study macroeconomic questions based on micro-founded models and data. They investigate how businesses react to the technological progress in information technology and artificial intelligence, as well as government interventions in the economy. The first chapter develops a new theory of firm size and firm dynamics. It employs personnel economics approaches within the span of control model in macroeconomics. The model generates increasing concentration and decreasing labor share of income over time without forcing any inefficiency. Personnel management and entrepreneurial risk in the model are the key determinants of the overwhelmingly discussed recent macro trends. A declining supervision cost enables better managers to expand their firms, resulting in a more concentrated economy and a riskier entrepreneurial environment. Risk-taking entrepreneurs are compensated with a growing profit leading to a diminishing labor share. The second chapter studies the impact of state capitalism in the form of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Focusing on the SOEs in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), it analyzes big data of more than 50 million firm-level observations covering 74 countries worldwide. It finds that relative to private firms, SOEs are born big but grow more slowly. Moreover, while the SOEs in MENA are less profitable and less productive, they receive cheaper loans. In addition to distorting capital allocation, they weaken economic competition and drop business dynamism. The third chapter studies customer data, which many consider the most valuable resource in today's economy, as an intangible capital, and pioneers a method to measure its economic value. It builds a novel database by merging Compustat with online clickstream data recording clicks of around 200 million users. That provides proxies for data inflow based on visit metrics. This chapter documents that firms' stock of customer data is distributed according to a right-skewed log-normal distribution with a fat tail. Furthermore, it reports a positive correlation between sales and data inflow and between data stock and profit as well as productivity. Relying on these insights, it develops a theory of customer data, where monopolistic firms have three departments: a usual Dixit-Stiglitz production department, a sales department collecting customer data as a byproduct, and a data department investing in software to extract taste predictions from data. It proves that firms with large data stocks have lower labor shares and face unfair antitrust policies. Additionally, this chapter leverages the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown as a natural experiment to identify the model. It finds that, in retail, slightly higher than one-third of firm profit comes from its stock of customer data.
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    An investigation of counselor trainees‟ perceptions of supervisor culturally competent feedback behaviors and general behaviors in supervision.
    (2011-08) Lee, Hyun Kyung
    Societies and cultures become more diverse and globalized. Changing demographics of the U.S. population draws increasing attention to issues of diversity and multicultural competence. In the mental health field, a growing body of research focuses on multicultural counseling and training. As supervision is a critical component of counselor training, including counselor development of cultural competence, culturally competent supervision has been studied in some previous studies. To date, however, little research has been conducted to comprehensively describe specific supervisor behaviors that constitute multicultural competence. In particular counselor trainees' perceptions of culturally competent supervisor behaviors, including supervisor provision of feedback, have received little research attention. Thus, three major research questions were investigated in the present study: (1) What supervisor behaviors (including feedback behaviors) do counseling trainees regard as culturally competent? (2) Do expectations of culturally competent supervisor behaviors differ between 1st year and 2nd year trainees? and (3) Do perceptions of culturally competent supervisor behaviors differ from perceptions of behaviors that comprise general supervisor competencies? Participants consisted of first and second year students enrolled either in a psychological counseling masters program or second year students enrolled in a genetic counseling masters program at the University of Minnesota (N = 51; 11 males and 40 females). A focus group design was used for this qualitative research. Participants in eight focus groups viewed a DVD containing two hypothetical supervision situations involving supervisor provision of feedback to a supervisee regarding the supervisee's apparent cultural insensitivity towards a client. One scenario portrayed a psychological counseling supervision relationship and one scenario portrayed a genetic counseling supervision relationship. Focus group participants responded to a series of questions regarding supervisor multicultural competence and general competence. They provided written responses prior to and after viewing the scenarios, and they gave verbal responses during focus group interviews. The focus group discussions were audiorecorded and transcribed by the researcher. Qualitative analysis of both written and verbal responses yielded four overarching themes reflecting supervisor culturally-relevant: Awareness, Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes. Some supervisor behaviors identified as culturally competent in this study are congruent with findings of previous studies (Ancis & Ladany, 2001; Dressel, Consoli, Kim, & Atkinson, 2007; Falender & Shafranske, 2004). Although most responses from the first year and the second year counseling students were similar and generally consistent, there were some notable differences particularly regarding expectations about supervisor provision of direction/guidance. Provision of guidance as a culturally competent supervisor behavior was a more prevalent theme for first year students. The findings of this study also show considerable overlap between behaviors associated with general supervisor competence and cultural competence (e.g., supervisor empathy, non-judgmentalness, self-disclosure). Major findings, study strengths and limitations, and clinical and research implications are discussed.
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    Principals and Their Supervisors: Relationships that Support Development
    (2022-05) Olson-Skog, Peter
    Principals can have a positive impact on student achievement by employing specific actions targeted at improving teaching and learning. District offices can have a positive impact by helping principals develop and grow as leaders, but how and under what conditions? While growth and development are entwined with relationships, little is understood about the relationship between principals and their supervisors, the focus of this study. Through interviews in four suburban school districts, a grounded theory emerged that described the relationship needed for superintendents (and others who lead principals) to play a meaningful role in principals’ growth as leaders. A trusting relationship was a pre-requisite to facilitating principal growth through a balancing of “push” and “support”. However, this trusting relationship (from the principals’ perspective) was more elusive and required more intentionality than many supervisors understood. The grounded theory that emerged from this study details the specific actions and characteristics that undergird both core concepts of a “trusting relationship” and achieving a balance of “pushing and support”. Four actions and four characteristics were identified as critical in establishing a trusting relationship. Five actions and two characteristics were identified as effective in achieving a balance of push and support. Examples of identified actions include “investing time” and “co-creation”. Examples of identified characteristics include “vulnerability” and “caring”. The ground theory illustrates how the different actions and characteristics interconnect, as well as compares the differences in emphasis between principals and their supervisors.
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    Supervising Paraprofessionals: Necessary Skills for Special Educators to Learn in Teacher Licensure Programs
    (2010) O'Leary, Aaron M; Nierengarten, Gerry; Hughes, Trudie; Brice, Lynn
    The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine supervisory skills special education teachers need to learn based on previous literature. Special education teachers, institute of higher education instructors, and paraprofessionals took part in the study. The participants completed online questionnaires that included items about supervisory skills learned by special education teachers in their teacher licensure programs, as well as how they supervised paraprofessionals. Stakeholder responses revealed several themes. Few special educators received supervisory training, especially in management, role clarification, meeting, orientation, and evaluation of paraprofessionals. Paraprofessionals reported little orientation and evaluation by special education teachers. All stakeholder groups noted the need for special educator training and establishment of communication and working relationship between special educators and paraprofessionals. Responses also reflected disagreement between special education teachers and paraprofessionals about how special educators supervise.